Inaugural Publishing Grants Announced

The Decorative Arts Trust is thrilled to announce the four recipients of the inaugural round of Publishing Grant funding. The Hispanic Society Museum and Library; The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art received Publishing Grants for Collections, Exhibitions, and Conferences, and Dr. Joseph H. Larnerd from Drexel University received a Publishing Grant for Dissertations and First-Time Authors.

In November 2024, the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York City’s Washington Heights will publish A Room of Her Own: The Estrados of Viceregal Spain to accompany their landmark exhibition of the same name. Guest Curator Alexandra Frantischek Rodriguez-Jack and Deputy Director and Head of Collections Margaret Connors McQuade will lead this examination of the estrado, defined in the early 18th-century treatise Diccionario de Autoridades as the “set of furniture used to cover and decorate the place or room where the ladies sit to receive visitors.” The estrado was a remarkable space where a diverse group of women engaged in elaborate social practices and displayed their collections of valuable objects from the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Decorative arts, paintings, rare books, and engravings from the Hispanic Society Museum and Library’s collection will be presented in an entirely new light, with many to be exhibited for the first time. For more information about the estrado, see Jorge Rivas Pérez’s recent magazine article.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA, plans to release a comprehensive publication about an influential Los Angeles-based ceramics artist in fall 2026. Although additional details cannot be shared at this time, the book will complement an exhibition led by Lauren Cross, PhD, the Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is publishing Art, Industry, and Reform in Philadelphia, 1876–1926, accompanying the museum’s spring 2026 exhibition of the same name. David L. Barquist, The H. Richard Dietrich, Jr., Curator of American Decorative Arts, and Colin Fanning, Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts, lead the exhibition and publication, which will focus on Philadelphia artisans and architects who drew on a range of inspirations—from the British Arts and Crafts movement to masterworks at the World’s Fairs—to address challenges of urban industrialization. Their project will be among PMA’s offerings during the nation’s 250th commemoration, which is also the museum’s 150th anniversary year.

Dr. Joseph H. Larnerd received the inaugural Publishing Grant for Dissertations and First-Time Authors. Larnerd, an Assistant Professor of Design History at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA, will publish Undercut: Cut Glass in Working-Class Life during the Long Gilded Age with the University of Delaware Press in fall 2025. This publication offers an original history of cut glass refracted through the labor required to make and maintain the glistening wares. Larnerd will show how popular representations of the medium and these widely discussed labors undercut how working-class peoples imagined and enacted social class, privilege, and mobility.

The Trust is pleased to have received so many outstanding applications for our new Publishing Grants. The next deadline for these grants is March 31, 2025. For more information on grants and scholarships from the Decorative Arts Trust, read about our Emerging Scholars Program, generously supported by many Trust members and donors. For grant announcements and deadline reminders, sign up for our e-newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. The deadline for the 2024 Prize for Excellence and Innovation is approaching on June 30.